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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Interview & Giveaway: Forged by Fate

Today I'm happy to welcome one of my longtime blog and writerly pals, Amalia Dillin, to talk about her debut novel, Forged by Fate. I'll also be giving away a copy of Forged by Fate to one lucky commenter on this post through Saturday, March 30th!

1. This novel is a
really unique take on a very old story. What inspired you to combine the
various eras you did in Forged by Fate?

Any story with Eve as a protagonist kind of begs for a
retelling of Creation – but from the start, she was always a woman who would be
reborn, generation after generation, life after life, hop-scotching from one
historical event to another. It was impossible for Eve to be *every* woman of
importance in history, and improbable that she would be, even if they all
worked out, chronologically, but some seemed more likely than others. For
example, her roles as Moses’s mother, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, made
perfect sense. But some of it is also just the periods and cultures I find
interesting, like the Nordic Bronze Age – I believe in writing about the things
I love, first and foremost, and that includes history!

2. What did you
find to be the hardest thing about combining gods from so many different world
mythologies?

Managing their egos and finding a way to fit them all
together in a way which allowed for the world to actually survive. How do the
gods work things out behind the scenes? Who decides which pantheon gets which
land mass? Do they divide the world up into specific territories, or do the
areas they govern depend upon people spreading the faith? These are impossibly
powerful individuals – if two gods who control the sun decide to get
territorial, nobody on earth is going to win. But you know there had to be
conflicts, and there had to be a system in place for those conflicts to be
addressed, and then there are the gods of trickery, mischief, and deceit,
trying to break the rules, upset the balance, and get their own way at the
expense of everyone else…

3. There are so
many memorable characters in this novel--which was your favorite to write?

I love Thor. This should come as no surprise to anyone
who knows anything about me. But I love him as a hero because he’s impossibly
powerful, a god, but still flawed. His virtues are also his greatest faults –
loyalty becomes blindness, honor becomes a cage, a reason for inaction in the
face of suffering. I love him, because the more I wrote, the more real he
became to me, and the more I understood why this was a god that people
worshipped, and why he was so, so well-loved among the common people.

That said, Adam really grew on me over the course of the
trilogy, too.

4. Ancient history
tends to have been written by men, but there are many stories and myths from
around the world that include strong women. (I'm a big fan of Athena myself).
Which is your favorite of these stories and why?

In history, I think the women who impress me most are the
Greeks – when in spite of the cultural repression, they still managed to get
their names into history. Women like the Spartan Queen, Gorgo, for example, who
isn’t just mentioned, but mentioned and acclaimed for her wisdom in a time when
women were really not thought well of, as reasonable beings.

Among the myths – I have a hard time choosing. I think
Hippodamia, the wife of Pirithous, is a fascinating character, because she’s
“kin” to the centaurs. The possibilities that offers for fiction are really
interesting, and I recently wrote a novella about her marriage to Pirithous, so
it’s fresh in my mind. But I also find the story of Helen of Troy to be…
something.

I guess this is my problem with women in myth – so often,
they are the reason for conflict and trouble and the people at fault. These
aren’t “damsels in distress” even, they’re women who are perceived as CAUSING
problems, sometimes even purposely. But the blame is most often placed on them.
Europa is at fault for her rape by Zeus for climbing onto the back of a strange
bull and wandering away from her friends to begin with. Helen is at fault for
running away with Paris, and staying with him, abandoning both her people and
her daughter in the process. Even Theseus’ Amazon wife is at fault for
abandoning her people, betraying her vows, and marrying him, and that choice
causes a war. Outside of Classical Myth, the Saga of the Volsungs (maybe more
legend than myth but still) is full of women who go about making trouble for
everyone involved, agents of murder and mayhem in the name of family honor, or
personal honor.

There are these sparks of personality and principle that
are so quickly snuffed out with some kind of punishment. Ariadne helps Theseus
escape the labyrinth, betraying her people and family, then is abandoned on the
island of Naxos, or else she helped Theseus to escape Crete and return to
Dionysus, and betrayed Theseus, if you want a slightly better spin, or else
Theseus abandoned her because of Dionysus or completely on accident – no matter
how you tell it, she is either punished for her betrayal by betrayal, or in the
best of circumstances, is the betrayer, straight up – but what was going on in
Crete that made going against her father and her people the BETTER choice? We
don’t know, not really. And that’s what makes them compelling as characters
around which one could write a book, but otherwise…

These are hard women to love, and the goddesses are maybe
even worse.

That said, Athena is a pretty strong and important
character in my FATE OF THE GODS trilogy – but not because I love the goddess
she is in the myths. For a goddess of Reason and Wisdom, she’s pretty
unreasonable and vengeful a lot of the time in those stories. So if she’s known
for being wise, why does she so often deviate from that character trait? It
makes her a lot more complicated to work with. But in fiction, that’s never a
bad thing!

5. What can we
next expect from you?

More of the same! Book two of the FATE OF THE GODS
trilogy, A FATE FORGOTTEN is coming, followed by the as-yet-untitled book
three, with the distinct possibility of some bonus content in between.

And of course there is my blog, wherein people can keep abreast
of what I’m working on lately. Usually the topics of my blogposts can point you
directly toward what I’m currently writing, since the blog is where I put all
my research for later reference.

***

After Adam fell, God made Eve to protect the
world. — Adam has pursued Eve
since the dawn of creation, intent on using her power to create a new world and
make himself its God. Throughout history, Eve has thwarted him, determined to
protect the world and all of creation. Unknown to her, the Norse god Thor has
been sent by the Council of Gods to keep her from Adam’s influence, and more,
to protect the interests of the gods themselves. But this time, Adam is after
something more than just Eve’s power — he desires her too, body and soul, even
if it means the destruction of the world. Eve cannot allow it, but as one
generation melds into the next, she begins to wonder if Adam might be a man she
could love.